How do I not break my elbow?

Playing Technique
#1

I’ve been going through the Pickslanting Primer (so apologies if my questions get answered later in the series) and have pretty much shored up that I’m an elbow picker. I was a little hesitant to accept it at first because I’ve always been told elbow picking is bad for whatever reason, but I’m willing to give it a shot because Troy’s arguments make sense and I’m tired of hitting a low speed limit with my inefficient wrist motion.

Now I’m nervous to go all in on elbow motion because the one guitarist I know who used his elbow would wear it out every few months and have to put the guitar down and wear a brace until he healed. I’ve also heard worse horror stories online and through my local grapevine about people who end up with some pretty serious elbow injuries from bad elbow picking mechanics. It sounds like quite a few elbow players end up changing their mechanics later because the elbow just can’t hang.

So is it worth staying with elbow motion, or should I just work on making my wrist motion more efficient? If I go with the elbow, how can I make sure to make life easy on that joint? What early signs should I look out for to make sure if I am starting to hurt myself that I stop and reevaluate my technique? Thanks for any input and tips!

#2

Well, to start off, don’t be nervous. There are players (to include pros) that use elbow and have done so for years / decades without issue (at least that they’ve said).

I had elbow issues (because sometimes I’d use elbow and not notice) and it forced me to be more aware of my picking, how to warm up, and eventually made me shift to mostly wrist / fingers. Also, I should mention that I was dealing with medial epicondylitis at the time from other things not related to guitar. All that being said, I think I use more elbow when I play bass.

I’d suggest you warm up with larger strumming motions at slower speeds, and as you feel “loose” / warm, make smaller motions at faster speeds. If you push it, you’ll likely feel some “bad” tension in a combination of your brachialis, triceps, biceps, and perhaps other spots like brachioradialis. Just ease off the speed and keep warming up, and if it doesn’t go away, just stop playing for a bit and come back to it later.

You can also concurrently build up your wrist, which I would suggest you do as well.

#3

Thanks the warmup idea especially is really helpful!

And I think I will try to build up my wrist in the meantime. Wrist motion felt really natural in all of the tests, but years of bad wrist mechanics on the guitar (lots of string hopping) is unfortunately going to take a while to unlearn.

Cheers!

#4

Since incorporating more elbow into my own playing I’ve started to notice how common elbow technique really is. Even guitarists you would typically think of as wrist players will often switch to elbow for very fast single string patterns :grinning:

That being said one practice session I did feel a tightness behind the elbow joint that felt like it would lead to an injury if I kept going but I just stopped using my elbow for that one session and I haven’t had any problems since. I have a bad habit of tensing up when I play so I think that may of been the culprit.

I’d say don’t put yourself into one category, work on both and go with whatever feels natural! I use lots of DSX wrist motion which pairs really nicely with elbow and I’ll occasionally notice the wrist and elbow working in unison :slight_smile:

1 Like